1968: ELECTION A CLIFF HANGER: After years of delivering results by telegraph, telephone, radio and television, it was the great advancement into the computing age that brought quick presidential results to a standstill. In a close race between Nixon and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a "breakdown of a computer system last night garbled election returns and upset the estimates of voter trends thru-out the nation," the Tribune reported in a front-page story. "The nation-wide computer operation was set up by the News Election service for the major wire services and the television networks." The backup system spit out glaring errors, including that Sen. Everett Dirksen was beating William G. Clark 7.6 million votes to 512 in Lake County alone, with no precincts reporting. Twenty years after the Dewey gaffe, the Tribune refused to jump to conclusions.

1968: ELECTION A CLIFF HANGER: After years of delivering results by telegraph, telephone, radio and television, it was the great advancement into the computing age that brought quick presidential results to a standstill. In a close race between Nixon and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a "breakdown of a computer system last night garbled election returns and upset the estimates of voter trends thru-out the nation," the Tribune reported in a front-page story. "The nation-wide computer operation was set up by the News Election service for the major wire services and the television networks." The backup system spit out glaring errors, including that Sen. Everett Dirksen was beating William G. Clark 7.6 million votes to 512 in Lake County alone, with no precincts reporting. Twenty years after the Dewey gaffe, the Tribune refused to jump to conclusions.